'Married!' said Annabelle, in a breathless whisper, while the four walls of the room seemed to fly round her and the eyes of Mary, who was impetuously grasping at a conclusion, wore a strange expression in which high indignation was blended with the tenderest pity as she related what she had just seen, and added:
'Oh, my darling, be calm! I am so sorry to tell you this—but, but—what can we think?'
'Ah! why does he deceive me so cruelly—why labour thus to break the heart of one who loves him as I do?'
'You must learn to think and speak in the past tense now,' continued Mary, whose tears fell fast, and she clasped her friend to her own bosom caressingly.
'Married,' thought Annabelle, 'that cannot be; but he is perhaps about to cast me off—play me false for another again!'
Anger and scorn struggled with love and sorrow in her heart; but her blue eyes were dry and tearless.
'Had papa been alive, Leslie dared not have treated me thus!' she exclaimed; 'but he knows I have no protector now, save a widowed mother. I wish that I had not met him again, Mary, or that I were dead—dead!' she exclaimed through her clenched teeth.
Mary, alarmed to see the storm she had raised, now attempted to soothe Annabelle.
'We may judge too rashly, after all, dearie,' she urged; 'it may be only one of those meaningless flirtations to which most young men—officers especially—are, it seems, addicted.'
'What right has he to engage in such, even if it be so?'